Not in feather beds: some collected papers

295 Pages·1968·7.549 MB·English

by  Viscount Cyril John Radcliffe

NOT IN FEATHER BEDS

THE VISCOUNT RADCLIFFE
P.C., G.B.E.
Not in Feather Beds
Some Collected Papers
'We may not look at our pleasure to go to
heaven in feather beds, it is not the way.’
Sir T homas M ore
HAMISH HAMILTON
LONDON
First published in Great Britain, 1968
by Hamish Hamilton Ltd,
90 Great Russell Street, London WCl
Copyright © 1968 by Lord Radcliffe
SBN 241 01590 l
Printed in Great Britain by
Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following for their agreement
to the reproduction of the articles included in this book:
University of Glasgow: Freedom of Information: A Human
Right; Holdsworth Club of Birmingham University: Law and the
Democratic State; Foyle College Old Boys Association and Magee
University College, Londonderry: Henry Lawrence Memorial
Lecture; University of Saint Andrews'. The Ancient Universities
of Europe; Northwestern University Press: Not in Feather Beds;
Cambridge University Press: Censors; Oxford University Press:
Mountstuart Elphinstone; London School of Economics and
Political Science: The Dissolving Society; Harvard University
Press: The Lawyer and His Times.
The Listener: Thoughts on India as ‘the Page is Turned';
The Place of Law Courts in Society; The Sunday Times: The
Gulbenkian I knew; The Lancet: How a Lawyer Thinks;
Financial Times: Viscount Bracken: An Appreciation; The Daily
Telegraph: Spoliation by Purse.
NationalArt-Collections Fund: Annual Address 1954; Birming­
ham. and Midland Institute: Patronage and the Arts; The Law
Society: Law and Order; The Kipling Society: Rudyard Kipling.
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CONTENTS
Introduction ix
I T houghts on India as ‘the P age is
T urned1 1
II Freedom of In fo rm a tio n : A
H uman R ight 7
HI The P la c e of Law C o u rts in
Society 27
IV T he N ational Art-C ollections
Fund 37
V Law and the D emocratic State 45
VI T he G ulbenkian I Knew 61
VII How a L awyer T hinks 67
VIII Address at the M emorial Service
for Robin C ruikshank, 24 May 1956 83
IX Henry L awrence M emorial
Lecture 87
X T he A ncient U niversities of
Europe 105
XI Viscount Bracken: A n
Appreciation 109
XII Spoliation by P urse 113
XIII Patronage and the Arts 121
XIV N ot in F eather Beds 137
XV T he Immortal M emory of
W illiam Shakespeare 155
XVI Censors 161
XVII M ountstuart E lphinstone 183
XVIII L aw and O rder 211
XIX T he D issolving S o c iety 229
Vlll CONTENTS
XX R udyard Kipling
XXI T he U niversity of W arwick
XXII T he L aw yer and H is T imes
INTRODUCTION
W HEN I see that the twenty-two productions of mine
that I am now introducing—lectures, addresses,
speeches, articles—cover a period of twenty years and
span the age of a man's life when he should be, if ever, magisterial,
I do not need to call my reader’s attention to the fact that I am
not by nature a man well fitted for communicating with the
public. I have, in fact, the two great disqualifications for a claim
on the public’s ear: I have very little specialized knowledge
about any one subject in particular and, thanks to a sound
traditional education, a complete ignorance about many subjects
in general. And all my life I have suffered from an inability to
make or to accept those generalisations about human affairs
that are quite simply necessary for their sensible administration.
I can be therefore neither an expert nor a statesman. These
conditions have not left me with a great deal that I can honestly
impart to a public which I continue to respect but which I am
increasingly unable to understand. Even the most elementary and
universal social principles, for instance, elude me: as that
whatever can be described as ‘socially divisive' is necessarily to
be abhorred or that loneliness is in itself a mark of failure in the
conduct of life, if not of positive ill-doing. Nevertheless, my
limitations have preserved for me an unallayed curiosity about
human nature and the destiny of man, which has not been
extinguished even by the blatancies of recent Reith lecturers;
a deep admiration for the courage, endurance and selflessness
with which in so many settings so many men have sustained the
weary burdens of the world; and the prized companionship of
those I love. I would like to think that some of those interests
are reflected in the pages that are to follow.
I cannot help feeling a little saddened, when I survey my
‘collected works', by the realization that so much of my total
literary output is submerged in the Reports of Committees of
which I have been chairman and in legal judgments that I have
delivered when sitting in the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council or in the House of Lords. A good deal of creative effort
has gone into this material, more perhaps than will ever come
out of it: but for this publication I have extracted nothing from
any such source. Of the Committee Reports there is no individual
author, and the views expressed and the manner of their
expression are the joint product of all who sign them. Nor have
I had the fortune to enjoy the glorious liberty of the sons of God
which is the privilege of those who compose minority reports.
The case is different with Judgments. They are at least my
own. Many of them would be, I think, very readable, if it were
not for the fact that even the best of judgments loses its effect if
the enunciatory part, which is of special interest to the general
reader, is abstracted from the detailed handling and arrangement
of the case’s often complicated facts, which cannot really be of
such interest, though they are essential to the whole conclusion.
It is in the interweaving of the two strands that lies the judge’s
art. Of course, judicial literature contains some famous passages
that have become well known and quotable, even detached from
their context, although the reasons why such pieces pass into
general currency are not always connected with their intrinsic
worth. But when I see what a poor showing is made by the three
or four extracts from opinions of famous ‘literary’ judges—
Lord Macnaghten, Lord Sumner and Lord Justice Bowen—which
Quiller-Couch admitted into the Oxford Book of English Prose,
I conclude both that he did not himself comprehend the essence
of the judicial art and that in the end its output is best reserved
unfilleted, for the reading of the specialist and the student.
I am sorry that this should be so. Just because it is a little out
of the main stream the judicial style has remained a trifle
provincial: esoteric, fond of archaisms, the wit a shade too dry,
the eloquence at moments too full in the throat. But after all for,